Course Announcements

As you might have seen in the section What do I need to do to participate in the course? we will be contacting you via email during the course. We will also be making the email text available here shortly after each message is sent out.

End of Course Announcement II (sent 27 October 2014)

"Hi everyone

Hope you've all had a great couple of weeks. This is a quick follow-up message to remind you all of a couple of opportunities post-course…

Badges! We are very pleased to have awarded two badges to date. There is still time to apply for a badge and we would love to see you submit your details for consideration. In addition to a project title you will be asked for a project URL (you can use the URL of the overview of your Discourse forum contributions here, for example), steps taken (tell us how you have participated in the course and why you think you have qualified for the badge) and lessons learnt (a brief reflective piece)… More here: https://p2pu.org/en/courses/2377/content/4823/

Second, whether you've completed a little bit of the course or have worked your way through all the sections, we would love to hear your thoughts about what worked and what didn't. What did you like? Where could we do better? If you haven't already done so, help us make the course better by filling in our survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/OpenResearch. The survey is open until Saturday 15 November 2014. Thank you so much for participating.

Finally, we are still keen to hear from you if you'd like to write a blog post on your experiences of the course. We know there's been some great blog posts about the course (thank you!) but if you would like to feature on the OER Research Hub website (http://oerresearchhub.org) then please get in touch (oer-research-hub[at]open.ac.uk)

Once again, thank you for participating in the course and for all your feedback to date.

With all best wishes and thanks Beck (on behalf of the Open Research course team)"

End of Course Announcement (sent 13 October 2014)

"Hello everyone

Congratulations! We’ve officially reached the end of our Open Research course. We do hope you’ve enjoyed participating in the course and sharing your ideas and experiences. We’ve certainly enjoyed working with you over the past four weeks, hearing your thoughts and talking with you on the Hangouts.

Second, we would love to hear your thoughts about the course and what worked and what didn’t. Did the course meet your expectations? What did you like about the course? Where could we improve? Help us to make your course better by telling us your thoughts in this survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/OpenResearch. The survey will be open until Saturday 15 November 2014 so there’s plenty of time to let us know what you think. Thank you!

Third, in the not too distant future we will be making a non-facilitated version of the course available and plan to run a further facilitated run of Open Research early in 2015. As we look at how we could improve and develop the course we will also be reviewing participant contributions. As mentioned in the “About” section of the course, all materials shared in the forums, spreadsheets, activities etc. will default to CC-BY-SA 4.0 (which the course and all School of Open offerings are licensed under) and we may choose to use contributions and ideas from you all so that others can benefit from your ideas and experiences. This will ensure that the course continues to improve and that the materials reflect the experiences of those who have previously participated. If you have any questions regarding this, please don’t hesitate to contact us on the email address below.

Finally, we would love to keep in touch with you! Let’s keep the conversation going using the #openresearch hashtag (if you use Twitter, the project can be found @OER_Hub). You can also see what we’re up to on our project website: http://oerresearchhub.org. We are currently planning further project webinars and hope to run a few on open research practices and the process of designing and putting together the course so watch this space and please do get in touch if there’s something specific you’d love to hear more about! In addition, we would love to hear from anyone who would like to guest blog post on their experiences of the course as part of a short series of blog posts we are planning on the process of developing and running the Open Research course. Please email us on the address below if you would be interested in participating and thanks to all of you who have already blogged about your experiences of participating in the course - we have enjoyed reading all your posts. : -)

Thanks to you all for helping make the course such a success and for your interest in open research!

Welcome to the fourth and last week of the course! So far you’ve had a chance to think about what it means to do open research, what are some of the ethical issues that may arise from doing research in the open, and to discuss the benefits of public dissemination. This week we invite you to reflect on your own experience of being an open researcher. Are you free on Thursday October 9th at 15.00 BST? Then come along to the last of the Google Hangouts and share some of those reflections with us.

Remember that you can get in touch at oer-research-hub@open.ac.uk and tweet us on #openresearch.

Thank you all for your contributions these past few weeks. We look forward to an exciting finale. But beware… this is not the last of the course announcements. We have badges!

Bea de los Arcos (on behalf of the course organisers)"

Week Three Course Announcement (sent 29 September 2014)

"Hi everyone

Wow… We’ve reached week three of the course! The past few weeks have certainly flown by; we hope that you’ve enjoyed participating in the course so far. We’ve certainly been enjoying finding out more about you all, your ideas and experiences.

For those of you who have yet to participate, please feel free to join us when you can. Over the past two weeks we’ve been exploring the concept and practice of open research and researching openly and ethically. As you know the course activities are (apart from the Google hangout) unscheduled so you can explore material at your own pace. If you do have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop us a line at: oer-research-hub@open.ac.uk

This week we’re looking at dissemination and open access publishing (sections 3.0-3.5 of the course). You’ll also have the chance to meet some more of the team on Thursday: this week’s scheduled Google Hangout will be led by researcher Bea de los Arcos and project administrator Natalie Eggleston. Join Nats and Bea at 15.00BST on 2 October to talk about open dissemination and discuss your ideas for your mini-research projects. More on the Hangouts here: https://p2pu.org/en/courses/2377/content/4799/.

For the final week of the course, we’ll be looking at the relationship between reflection and openness. We’ll be back in touch again next Monday to introduce the topic, summarize what’s happened on this week of the course and tell you more about our course badge!

Wishing you all a wonderful week -
Beck Pitt (on behalf of the course organisers)"

Week Two Course Announcement (sent 22 September 2014)

"Hi everyone!

Welcome to week two! We hope you have enjoyed the first week of the course.

Just a quick recap on what’s happened:

We have had some fantastic comments from you all and it’s great to
see discussion generating around the course material.

This week the focus is on research ethics and we ask you to review sections 2.0-2.5 of the course. Our scheduled activity for this week is the group Hangout on Thursday (25th September) between 15.00-16.00BST where we’ll be talking more about this week’s activities. More on the Hangouts here: https://p2pu.org/en/courses/2377/content/4799/.

Please join us and share your thoughts and ideas on the ethics of open research. Here are a couple of items we will discuss:

Don’t forget that, in addition to sharing your ideas and thoughts on the course activities via the Discourse forums, if you have a question or comment, you to share it with everyone by using the course hashtag (#openresearch). You can also email us (oer-research-hub[at]open.ac.uk).

Next week we’ll be looking more closely at dissemination and open access publishing. We’ll be in touch again next Monday to introduce the topic and will also be summarizing what’s happened this week on the course.

Wishing you all a great week!
Beck Pitt and Rob Farrow
(On behalf of the course organisers)"

Week One Course Announcement (sent 15 September 2014)

"Hi everyone

Welcome to the course! It's great to have you on board and we're very excited that an amazing 139 people have signed-up to participate in our first iteration of School of Open’s "Open Research"...

It was great to meet some of you on last week's Q&A session Hangout and wonderful to see that some of you have already introduced yourself. If you haven't already done so, please tell us a bit more about yourself and what you hope to get out of the course here: https://p2pu.org/en/courses/2377/content/4680/

This week we are exploring the idea of open research and invite you to look at sections 1.0-1.5 of the course. Our scheduled activity for this week is the group Hangout on Thursday (18 September) between 15.00-16.00BST where we’ll be talking more about this week’s activities. More on the Hangouts here: https://p2pu.org/en/courses/2377/content/4799/
Please join us and share your thoughts and ideas!

If you haven’t already done so, please also read the “Welcome to the course” and “What do I need to do to participate in the course” sections.

In addition to sharing your ideas and thoughts on the course activities via the Discourse forums (http://discourse.p2pu.org/category/open-research) if you have a question or comment, we would encourage you to share it with everyone by using the course hashtag (#openresearch). You can also email us (oer-research-hub[at]open.ac.uk).

Next week we’ll be looking more closely at how to conduct research that is both open and ethical. We’ll be in touch again next Monday to introduce the topic and will also be summarizing what’s happened this week on the course.

We look forward to meeting you all soon and hope you enjoy the course!
Beck Pitt
(On behalf of the course organisers)"